Empty Is
by A Garbage Can't
Summary: Life after high school is difficult. It's even more so when you're too Super to be normal, too normal to be a Super, and are starting a life in a new and strange city. They say that when one door closes, another opens. Maybe that saying has some truth to it.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own any characters other than ones I obviously created myself, nor do I own The Incredibles, nor do I own the song with the same name as the title. **

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_**Empty is a string of dirty days**_

_**Held together by some rain.**_

_**And the cold winds drumming at the trees again.**_

_**-"Empty Is", by Frank Sinatra**_

**3rd Person POV**

A young woman woke up from her shallow nap with a jerk when the bus she was on stopped moving, causing her head to slam into the glass window she had previously been leaning on. Still tired and not quite aware of where she was yet, she scowled at the window as if it had decided to hit her. As she rubbed the side of her head, gradually becoming more focused, she realized how ridiculous she was being. Still, she made one last face at the poor pane of glass and the traffic outside it before she sighed and let her attention shift to something else. That something else, of course, being that the man sitting next to her was snoring loudly enough that she was certain his parents had been vacuum cleaners, or perhaps lawnmowers. How she had slept through it the first time, she had no clue, but she was sure there was zero chance of her nodding off again.

The lights in the bus were off, most likely at the request of the multitude of people around her who were, like she had been, sleeping through the rocks-in-a-blender sound of Mr. Hoover. In fact, several people were contributing to the wonderful orchestra. Not everyone was sleeping, however. A scan of the seats around her showed at least a dozen faces lit up by blue light from their technology of choice, whether it be the rather impressive and seemingly new Mac of the business man behind her, or the handheld gaming device of the fat kid who had whined nonstop to his mother the first hour of the trip for it and was apparently still on it almost nine hours later. It honestly reminded her of her little brother, whose parting words to her as she had left had been _"Don't forget to buy me a new game for my birthday, it's only a few months away"_. She rolled her eyes at the memory. It was no wonder she had left, honestly.

Now bored with nothing to do, she pulled out her sketchbook and flipped through the pages, remembering what had influenced each one. There were random ears on one page, eyes on another. There was her old cat, she had copied a photograph of him shortly after he died. Not exactly a masterpiece, but it didn't have to be. Cartoon characters in arguments littered this group of pages, while this next one showed them kissing. She blushed and quickly flipped past the one sexual drawing, from when she had been dared to draw hentai in class a few months before graduation. There was a jumbled Rubix cube, and an impossible triangle. A leprechaun eating a potato, and immediately after it, a potato eating a leprechaun. Landing on a blank page, she used a pen to write down a list.

**Things To Do When You Arrive**

1\. Get a motel room for the night.

2\. In the morning, search for an apartment.

3\. Find employment.

Leaving it there, she sighed and looked at her watch. It was somewhere between 1:00 and 1:15 in the morning, meaning that she still had almost a full day left of her drive. Sure, maybe moving to California was a bit of a radical choice after living on the east coast her entire life, but sometimes radical was good. She had needed a change in her life, otherwise she would have driven herself into the ground. After spending a decade pretending to be something she wasn't, she felt that she deserved this.

With that in mind, she though back over what she had been dreaming of before she had been awakened. It wasn't really a dream, she couldn't remember a time when she had actually dreamed. No, it was a memory.

_"Addie, do you know what Supers are?"_

_"Yes! It's people who have superpowers!"_

_"That's right, Addie. Now, can you keep a secret? It's a very important secret, so you can't tell anyone. Not your friends, not the ice cream man, not even your teachers."_

_"Not even my teachers? Okay, Mommy, I promise."_

_"Pinky promise?"_

_"Uh huh!"_

_"Addy, it's time you found out the truth about our family. Do you remember that day when you found your Grandma in the garden talking to the foxgloves?"_

_"Uh huh. Is Grandma crazy?"_

_"No, sweetie. Your Grandma isn't crazy. Now remember, you can't repeat what I'm going to tell you to anybody."_

That had been years ago, shortly before she learned the secret that was going to define the rest of her life. She had been six years old at the time, just starting first grade. She had realized, of course that her older sister spent more time with her mom's side of the family than she did, but being a little kid she hadn't been able to understand why such favoritism was happening. She had just thought that it was because she was little. When her female cousins laughed behind her back, calling her a weirdo, she thought it was because of her disproportionately large teeth.

The truth hurt so much worse.

Still, she recovered. She started spending less time with her mom's side of the family, walling them off like they weren't a part of her life. When she was forced to spend time with them, she would bring a book, and lose herself in the pages. The girls might make fun of Addison, their freak cousin, but they wouldn't dare make fun of the Dark Lord Addison, Destroyer of Worlds, or Consulting Detective Addison, or the Good Knight Addison. With each book there was a new universe, a new Addison to be created, and when the book ended, to be sent on further adventures that she made up herself. The books gave her a way out of the monotony of her everyday life.

And although her mom was uncertain about allowing her to continue creating worlds in her head, she did nothing to stop it.

Her dad, on the other hand, openly encouraged it. In the afternoons, when he got home from work and she from school, they would sit on the couch together in silence for hours at a time, and when she couldn't stand the quiet any longer she would put down her book and talk about what was happening, and who her favorite character was, and why she did/didn't want to go live in the world of the book. When given the right topic to talk about, the silent girl would go through a metamorphosis and become this creature that could talk non-stop until interrupted, and books were always the right topic.

To Addison, he wasn't just her father. He was her best friend, her captivated audience, her mentor, her librarian. Oh, was he her librarian. When she finished a book series, he suggested a new one. When she couldn't find a book she had borrowed from the library because she was so small and the pile of books so large, he would help her put them all back on the shelves until they found it. When there was a word she didn't understand, he would toss a dictionary to her and teach her how to use it.

So when The Divorce happened, and the court gave her to her mom, it crushed her just a bit inside. When they moved away, and she was surrounded on all sides by the same family members who had always looked down on her, she was crushed just a bit more. She sank gradually into depression that year, feeling tired all the time and not having the willpower to do anything. Her homework was never finished, she didn't read chapters for school, she would fall asleep during lessons. Her grades dropped from straight A's to C's and D's. When her mother noticed, she criticized her for not doing better, and compared her to her older sister who had recently earned a full scholarship to college. The foggy haze that surrounded Addison darkened and thickened.

When soccer season started, she threw herself into the practices. She would leave scratched and bruised and bleeding with the biggest grin on her face anyone had ever seen, and a glint in her green eyes that suggested that she was the one who had dealt out a beating, rather than taking one herself. _"Suicidal" _her teammates would whisper when they thought she couldn't hear, after one particularly violent practice where she was hit in the face several times and then slammed into the goalpost. She had the same grin on her face the entire time. This was when she was fourteen.

Now, four years later, she was a new person. She had long since overcome her depression on her own, and her grades had risen high enough for her to graduate with a reasonable GPA. And now she was leaving the past behind her for good. She had no family in California, no one who would know her or have expectations for her.

Taking a steadying breath, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her bus ticket, glancing once more at the destination. "Metroville..." She whispered.

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**And there we have it. Let me know what you think, please, it's been a long time since I've written fanfiction. I'm still working on further chapters, but by the time i pull together the guts to upload this I'll probably at least have two and three finished. I don't know if this will end up being more than a thing I do when I'm up at 2 am and no one wants to talk to me, so I'm not putting up any definite upload times. The timeline, by the way, for this story is about a year after the events of the movie. There will therefore be no shipping of my OC with any of the Parr kiddies. Sorry. Alright, that's me done yapping. If you're reading this in the distant future and there are more chapters to read, then by all means please hit that 'Next Chapter' button. If not, and you genuinely like this thingy, keep an eye out for updates. If I lose inspiration for this I'll make sure to let you know. The next chapter will be in Addison's point of view, and it will probably shift a bit from chapter to chapter. And as we switch to first person, expect to hear some, well, looser language. **


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own The Incredibles. What a surprise.**

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**Addison's POV**

I made a serious mistake when I chose to sit on a bus for the entire ride to California. Sure, it was two hundred dollars less expensive than a plane ride, but probably for good reason. When making my decision, I failed to take into account several things. One: somewhere between California and DC there lies an enormous freaking desert that apparently the bus company felt was insignificant enough to leave off the website. Two: there is an unreasonably high chance that if you take any type of public transportation alone you will end up sitting next to the most disgusting person on the planet. Three: the same bus company as mentioned previously might not actually be aware of the same freaking enormous desert as mentioned earlier even existing, because they spend zero money on their air conditioning.

When you add these things together, you get extreme agony, because not only was I dying from the heat but my nostrils were dying as well. Apparently, to qualify for the most disgusting person in the world you cannot own deodorant and you must have BO that smells like a dead animal that was peed on. I was quickly coming to the conclusion that once I get to California, I'm staying there for good because no power in the world is ever getting me back on this bus after I step off.

Needing to relax a tiny bit, I pulled my Rubix cube out of my bag. It was already scrambled, I had done that while waiting at the bus stop the day before. Not needing any focus for the moment, I allowed muscle memory to take over as I considered my situation. I was currently a bit past halfway through the trip, and we were due for a rest stop at some point in the next couple of hours. Every nine hours we were getting off the bus and doing what we needed to while the two drivers on board switched shifts. There was, of course, a tiny bathroom in the back of the bus, but due to the heat no one wanted to use it and risk polluting the entire bus with that kind of odor. I shifted in my seat a bit to see what kind of state my bladder was in, but everything seemed alright for now. It was probably due to the fact that all my liquids were leaving me as sweat.

I found that idea to be gross, but intriguing. Nevertheless, not the kind of thing anyone wants to think about. I glanced around the train and decided that I could spend some time playing a game my dad had invented shortly after I began reading Sherlock Holmes. It didn't have a definite title, but that was mainly because the two of us stink at naming things. What the game essentially was was people watching. We would pick people and analyze them, trying to figure out how they ticked. There was no way to definitely prove any of our theories, but whoever came up with the most evidence in their favor generally won. Playing it alone was less fun, but not something I was unaccustomed to.

For the next half hour I wasted time analyzing the people around me. The woman who sat in front of me was an elementary school teacher who had recently lost a family member in a car accident and was headed to California to comfort the family who lived over there. The man beside her was not her husband, thankfully, because he was cheating on his current one with two or more other women. Another woman seated a few seats away had been hospitalized recently but after her release had turned to alcoholism.

That wasn't to say that everyone on the bus was currently in a bad place, though. The man beside me, as gross as he was, had stopped doing drugs a few months ago because he needed to get his ex-girlfriend back and was now engaged. I considered buying him a gift card at the next stop, but I had a feeling that they wouldn't have one that said "Congratulations on not ruining your life anymore, you stupid smelly bastard". Perhaps I could settle on "Congrats on the engagement" or, if I was feeling particularly cruel, "Congrats on the pregnancy".

I had already solved the cube twice, so I put it away and tried to figure out something else to do. I mentally ran through the list of games I could play.

Counting roadkill? No, too morbid. Also I couldn't actually see the road too well from where I was sitting.

Word association? Hard to play with one person.

Seeing how long I could stare at the back of someone's head until they turned around? Already did that. The record on this trip is twenty-five minutes.

Naming a Beatles song for every letter of the alphabet? Works fine until you get to Q. Or X. Or Z. They do have a lot of songs, though. Geez.

How about colors? It's this game that gives Crayola their chance to shine. Quince Jam Brown, anyone? How about Xenon White?

I searched through my mind for some category that I hadn't already done on a car ride at some point in my life. It was hard, as I had done everything from kid's movies (Antz through Zorro) to body parts (Adipose through Zygomatic), and finding something new is a game in itself. Trees? Nope. Porn Star names? Nope.

I could always sit here in silence for the next few hours, but that's never fun.

Ooh, here's a thought; I could start a _conversation_ with someone.

I considered the idea for a solid three seconds, shivered, and locked the thought up in the corner of my mind that held the really, _really_ bad ideas. Other thoughts found in this zone are _"Hey, let's test the flammability of peanut butter by smearing it on our arm and lighting it"_,_ "I wonder what people taste like"_, and_"Hey, since I don't know the answers to this math test how about I just draw dicks all over it and turn it in". _On very rare occasions these thoughts will escape and cause me to do really weird things, but for the most part I have things under control.

Sometimes I wonder how my life would be different if I hadn't developed this brain-actions filter. The way I figure it, I'd probably be in prison with several other inmates trying to decide the best way to kill me with a dull spoon. The crazy house is another possibility. If anyone ever did decide to stick me there, all the evidence they'd need would be the detailed account of the way I'd kill my victims if I became a serial killer that I wrote when I was ten or eleven. The filter was developed slightly later in life, and the four page essay in my sloppy fifth grader handwriting is currently in a trash heap somewhere from where I threw out my elementary school notebooks during the transition to junior high.

Sadly, I can still remember every single word of that stupid thing. I mean, it was better than the declarations of love other girls my age were writing at that point, but being the Wednesday Addams of the school doesn't exactly make it easier to make friends. Thankfully I was always more passive aggressive than actually violent, tending more to steal all of someone's writing utensils and put them in the container of extras in the teacher's desk rather than deck them, so I didn't technically have a juvenile record. The sliced onions that mysteriously ended up in their lunch boxes after each time someone tried to beat me up did no physical damage, nor did the fact that their gym clothes always smelled like moldy broccoli.

Of course, I had nothing at all to do with the last two. Nope, not me.

But all pranking aside, elementary school was not exactly a blast. I didn't get much involved in inter-student politics, preferring to stick my nose in a book rather than in other people's business. During that time, I was coming to grips with who and what I was, and other people were an unnecessary complication that I didn't really need outside of borrowing a pencil every now and then or the dreaded 'group projects' that teachers seem to love. Occasionally I would recruit someone to help me with one of my quests to sneak books out of the library, back in the golden days before they had those electronic things at the exits that can tell if a book hasn't been checked out. The bastards.

I never will understand the book limit at libraries. So what if I want to check out more than five books? You don't know me. Maybe I'm doing a research project. Maybe I'm plotting world domination. Maybe I just want to binge read some C.S. Lewis.

Of course, the students I recruited weren't interested in me or my reasons in stealing the books. They just wanted the candy that was promised to them if we succeeded.

And goodness, does time fly when you're remembering the good old days. I could now see a rest stop along the road up ahead, probably full of truckers and tourists in equal numbers. I considered everything I needed to do in the fifteen minutes we were given before the bus would leave again, whether or not we were on it. If this stop was the same as the past ones we'd stopped at, it would have bathrooms, fast food, a convenience store, and a coffee bar. Water and snacks were probably my top priority, followed by bathroom. I considered looking for a can of dry shampoo, but figured that with my hair as short as it was it didn't matter much anyways. I'd be able to take a shower in about fifteen hours anyways, and it's not like I'd meet anyone important between now and then.

As the bus squealed to a stop, everyone on the bus stood up and pushed to get off the bus as soon as they could. I'd like to say I was different, that I patiently waited for my turn, but I was determined to get off and I'll be damned if having to step on a foot or two was going to stop me.

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**Alright, so there goes Chapter 2! Hello to anyone who stuck with me this far, you are appreciated very much. All the proofreading and editing is done by me, so there might be errors here and there that I wasn't aware were errors. Correcting them in a comment will not be looked down upon or make me sad or any of that shit, it will make me quite relieved in fact because I'll be able to fix it before anyone else reads it. Same goes to any error in my information. Or if I say something that contradicts one of my earlier statements. Now, flaming is something entirely different. This story will not revolve around the lives of the Parrs, so if that is what you were hoping for, you can leave now. Instead, it will revolve around the life of a girl that technically could have been alive during the events of the movie and not have affected the plot in any way, and will occasionally meet the Parrs and other characters as she goes through her daily life in metroville. Now, in later chapters she may end up more involved in their lives, but as of now she has not even begun her life in the city. She is not related to the Parrs, nor will she be 'adopted' by them.**

**Oh, and you may have noticed that this chapter does not quite start where the other left off. You will notice this is a recurring event, as I feel no need to detail each and every hour of the girl's life, and I have an unusual dislike of sudden scene changes in-chapter. This means that there will be some shorter chapters, but I'll try not to post them on their own. Consider them bonus chapters, since they'll be posted with the normal 1000-2000 word updates.**


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